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Galloway V Telegraph CA 25 Jan 2006

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Galloway V Telegraph CA 25 Jan 2006 Neutral Citation Number: [2006] EWCA Civ 17 Case No: A2/2005/0308 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION) ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION The Honourable Mr Justice Eady [2004] EWHC 2786 QB Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London, WC2A 2LL Date: 25/01/2006 Before : SIR ANTHONY CLARKE MR LORD JUSTICE CHADWICK and LORD JUSTICE LAWS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Between : GEORGE GALLOWAY MP Claimant/ Respondent - and - THE TELEGRAPH GROUP LTD Defendant/ Appellant - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Richard Rampton QC and Heather Rogers (instructed by Davenport Lyons) for the Claimant James Price QC and Matthew Nicklin (instructed by Dechert) for the Defendant Hearing dates: 11 and 12 October 2005 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Judgment Approved by the court for handing down (subject to editorial corrections) Judgment Approved by the court for handing down Galloway v Daily Telegraph (subject to editorial corrections) Sir Anthony Clarke MR: Introduction 1. This is the judgment of the court. George Galloway is a well known Member of Parliament. In this action he sued The Daily Telegraph (or strictly The Telegraph Group Ltd) for damages for libel on the ground that he was defamed in its editions of 22 and 23 April 2003. The action was tried by Eady J without a jury and on 2 December 2004 he handed down a lengthy judgment running to 218 paragraphs. He held that the articles complained of were seriously defamatory of Mr Galloway. He noted that The Daily Telegraph did not seek to justify the defamatory statements as true and held that none of them was protected either by privilege at common law, whether under the principle in Reynolds v Times Newspapers Limited [2001] 2 AC 127 or otherwise, or by the defence of fair comment. He awarded damages of £150,000. 2. The judge refused permission to appeal. Permission was subsequently refused on paper by Keene LJ but was granted by Tuckey and Latham LJJ after oral argument on 18 April 2005. In this appeal it is accepted on behalf of The Daily Telegraph that the articles were defamatory but it is said that they were protected by privilege and that they were no more than fair comment so that the newspaper is not liable. Alternatively it is said that the damages were excessive. The articles 3. The first article was published on 22 April 2003, which was just over a month after the invasion of Iraq by coalition forces and at a time when British and American troops were still heavily engaged in fighting. The articles were based on documents found by a Daily Telegraph reporter called David Blair in badly damaged government offices in Baghdad. On 21 April, the day before publication, Andy Sparrow of the Telegraph telephoned Mr Galloway and asked him for his reaction to a number of points arising out of the documents which Mr Blair had found in Baghdad. There is a transcript of that conversation which was before the judge and which we have seen. 4. It is impossible to set out in this judgment the whole of the material published on 22 and 23 April which is relevant or potentially relevant to the issues between the parties. However we will set out the key parts of it in much the same way as the judge did. There are four articles complained of in the issue of 22 April. The first was on the front page under the heading “Galloway was in Saddam’s pay, say secret Iraqi documents”. Underneath appeared three bullet point sub-headings as follows: • “Labour MP ‘received at least £375,000 a year’” • “Cash came from oil for food programme” • “Papers could have been forged, he says” Judgment Approved by the court for handing down Galloway v Daily Telegraph (subject to editorial corrections) 5. The article is attributed to Mr David Blair “in Baghdad”. The whole of the article is complained of but the judge, in our view correctly, formed the view that the flavour of the article is sufficiently conveyed by the introductory paragraphs: “GEORGE GALLOWAY, the Labour backbencher, received money from Saddam Hussein’s regime, taking a slice of oil earnings worth at least £375,000 a year, according to Iraqi intelligence documents found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad. A confidential memorandum sent to Saddam by his spy chief said that Mr Galloway asked an agent of the Mukhabarat secret service for a greater cut of Iraq’s exports under the oil for food programme. He also said that Mr Galloway was profiting from food contracts and sought ‘exceptional’ business deals”. 6. The second article complained of is also in the 22 April edition, on page three. It is headed “The go-between” and “Loyal Ba’athist ‘supplied Saddam with weapons’”. Again the article is attributed to Mr Blair in Baghdad. It is introduced as follows: “GEORGE Galloway’s Jordanian intermediary has a family history of loyalty to Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, according to his Iraqi intelligence profile. Fawaz Abdullah Zureikat, 53, would clearly be an ideal choice to conduct any business dealings with the Iraqi regime. His Mukhabarat secret service profile, attached to the intelligence chief’s memorandum to Saddam’s office on Mr Galloway, refers to him warmly as a ‘sympathiser with Iraq’”. 7. As the judge observed, the article continues with a brief description of Mr Zureikat’s background and business activities. It also refers to him as Mr Galloway’s “representative in 2000” and to his company having been mentioned (in one of the documents found) “as a front for Mr Galloway’s business dealings in Iraq”. 8. On page four of the same issue alongside a photograph of Mr Galloway, sitting smiling with Saddam Hussein, there appears the third article complained of, which is attributed to Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor. It is headed “Oil for food” and “Billions poured through holes in sanctions”. It is introduced by the following paragraphs: “FOR years, Saddam Hussein abused the United Nations oil- for-food programme to fund Iraq’s own illegal activities and reward the regime’s favoured friends. Judgment Approved by the court for handing down Galloway v Daily Telegraph (subject to editorial corrections) The embargo may have been designed to ‘contain’ Saddam, but several loopholes allowed him to earn billions of pounds in illegal revenues through oil sales. The papers found in Baghdad suggest that George Galloway, through his associates, was granted two kinds of deal. The first was the right to buy Iraq’s oil, under the oil-for-food programme, at concessionary prices and sell it on at a profit. The second was to sell food and perhaps other civilian supplies to Iraq”. 9. The fourth article complained of in the issue of 22 April 2003 consisted of a leader headed “Saddam’s little helper”, which was the only leader published in The Daily Telegraph that day. The judge identified the flavour of the article as appearing in the first three paragraphs: “It doesn’t get much worse than this. George Galloway is Britain’s most active and visible peace campaigner. The Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin did not just oppose the recent campaign against Saddam Hussein; he lobbied equally aggressively against the first Gulf war, and - during the years in between – for an end to sanctions. Yesterday, The Daily Telegraph’s correspondent in Baghdad, David Blair, unearthed papers detailing alleged payments from Saddam’s intelligence service to Mr Galloway through a Jordanian intermediary. There is a word for taking money from enemy regimes: treason. What makes this allegation especially worrying, however, is that the documents suggest that the money has been coming out of Iraq’s oil-for-food programme. In other words, the alleged payments did not come from some personal bank account of Saddam’s, but out of the revenue intended to pay for food and medicines for Iraqi civilians: the very people whom Mr Galloway has been so fond of invoking. Speaking from abroad yesterday, Mr Galloway was reduced to suggesting that the whole thing was a Daily Telegraph forgery, but the files could hardly be more specific. One memo comments: ‘His projects and future plans for the benefit of the country need financial support to become a motive for him to do more work, and because of the sensitivity of getting money directly from Iraq it is necessary to grant him oil contracts and special commercial opportunities to provide him with a financial income under commercial cover without being connected to him directly’”. Judgment Approved by the court for handing down Galloway v Daily Telegraph (subject to editorial corrections) 10. In the 23 April issue there is more coverage of Mr Galloway’s activities. Again, we take the description of it principally from the judgment. On the front page there is a large photograph of Mr Galloway alongside a poster of Saddam Hussein. Above the photograph, alongside one another, there are three “bullet point” headlines: • “Telegraph reveals damning new evidence on Labour MP. • Bluster, two homes and the unanswered questions. • Tory party donor is named as key partner in oil contracts.” Underneath those bullet points, but still above the photograph, there is a headline in large bold type, which reads: “Memo from Saddam: We can’t afford to pay Galloway more”. 11. Mr Galloway again makes four complaints about the 23 April issue. They relate to articles on the front page, to a headline across the top of pages two and three, to an article on page three and to an article or leader on page 25. The front page article is again attributed to Mr Blair in Baghdad and the judge identified these key allegations in it: “SADDAM HUSSEIN rejected a request from George Galloway for more money, saying that the Labour backbencher’s ‘exceptional’ demands were not affordable, according to an official document found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad.
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